[Simh] Odd Simh networking issue...

[Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm]

Hi Mike,

On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 8:31 PM, Mike Hebel wrote:
> First - new to the list.  Joined after creating the following weird object...  ;-)
> 
> I currently have a Cobalt Qube2 with 256M running NetBSD 4.0 with a custom
> kernel.  On that machine I'm running VMS 7.3 using the custom ka655x.bin
> firmware that allows VMS to see more than 64M of ram.  (I have it
> recognizing 128M.)
-
> That's not my problem though.  The issue is that I'm getting duplicate packets
> on that system and packet loss when I ping the system.  I can't really telnet
> into it (it works...sometimes) and I definitely can't ftp anything onto the Vax
> instance itself.  Using teh standard TCP/IP instance that comes with the 7.3
> hobbyist install image.
> 
> The duplicate packet errors happen on the native Tulip interfaces but if I
> switch to a PCI card I don't get DUP!s just drops.  And it seems that it doesn't
> matter what kernel I use for NetBSD either.

What gives you the impression that there are duplicate packets?  Is something (The NetBSD code, the VMS IP stack, simh network layer) saying there are duplicate packets?  How are the "drops" you are mentioning indicated?  Is it  merely by network traffic (ftp, telnet) not succeeding or something else?

> I built simh with a link to the dynamic pcap libraries as NetBSD doesn't seem
> to have a static library link for that.  At least not on my installation anyway.

What simh code are you running with?

Simh's network code has been revised significantly in the code which is about to be released.  You can pickup the v3.9-0-rc2 codebase at: https://github.com/markpizz/simh/downloads.  Download the simh-v3.9-0-rc2.zip available on that page and unpacking with 'unzip -a simh-v3.9-0-rc2.zip'.

The makefile should just work and build a vax simulator with network support: make vax

Once you're working with the latest code we can explore the behaviors you're seeing.

> Thinking of doing this all again with a fresh load of NetBSD as I have several
> Cobalt boxes available.
> 
> Any suggestions? (0)

Let me know where you end up.

Good Luck.

- Mark Pizzolato